Kelly Trogdon (Lingnan): Grounding Content

Date and time:

Thu, 20/10/2011 - 16:00 - 18:00

Location:

Coombs Seminar Room C

The responsiveness of a mental representation R to what it misrepresents depends on R’s responsiveness to what it actually represents but not vice versa. From this plausible idea Fodor fashions his influential theory of content – the asymmetric dependence theory (ADT) – understanding the relevant notion of dependence as counterfactual dependence. I think that the motivating idea, however, is more naturally expressed in terms of the relation of grounding. With this as a point of departure, I develop and defend an ADT-style theory that replaces counterfactual dependence with grounding. After motivating the account I respond to two objections to it and then show how our discussion recommends a response to a recent objection to informational theories of content in general.